Evolution of a high performing affiliate program.

Australia is still a relatively young partnerships market and quite a lot of major players are yet to even enter the channel. 

When we look at the US and EMEA, the landscape is more mature and usually programs have been running and evolving for years. The more mature the program, oftentimes the more nuanced and sophisticated the program and strategies are. 

So when you are in the early stages of a new affiliate program, generally speaking what is important is building the program in a sustainable way. What I mean by that is working with reputable partners who make sense and building those working relationships. 

Sometimes only working with a small group of strong partners can deliver what you need. And over time, you can learn which types of partners are going to work best for you. 

Implementing some basic strategies, such as dynamic commissioning, can help you to maximise your budget and keep leakage to a minimum. You can offer a higher CPA for new customers or sale items, or products that drive a higher margin etc. 

Over time you get to see what works and what doesn’t, and you can utilise data to make decisions based on your goals. 

Ideally you want to have a healthy mix of both affiliates and affiliate types - this is called partner diversification. Examples of partner types are: cashback, loyalty, comparison, content, app and influencers to name a few. 

As time goes on and your program matures, you’ll want to become more strategic in how you optimise both your partner’s activities and the technology. As you can imagine when you are working with 50 partners it’s simple and straightforward to be across things like validations and new partners onboarding. However at a certain point you will want to be streamlining processes and workflow with automation. 

That’s where it becomes apparent that in order to take your program to that next level - you will most likely need to migrate to a SaaS platform if you are not already on one. 

Affiliate marketing is still quite a manual channel and so automation will be your best friend when it comes to bulk tasks such as partner communications and validations. 

Only then are you able to fully harness each partnership and optimise your strategies whilst being laser focused on achieving the outcomes necessary to get the absolute most out of the channel. 

At this point the sky is the limit on commissioning strategies, reporting and real time transparency, creative and innovative recruitment and finding new partners through data driven algorithms.